Sarcasm, Reading and Not Letting Kids Ruin His Video Game – The Things that Make Our Relationship Work

If you had to name five things that makes your relationship work – what would be at the top of your list? When it comes to making a relationship work, we’ve been lucky? enough to not have to. I mean, when you know it’s right, it’s right, right? We met, dated for a month, got exclusive and moved in together a week later. Six months later we were engaged, a year later Olivia was born, and we’re still… planning that wedding.

There are certain things that make it work – certain things that keep it real, at the same time as keeping it fresh. Here are a handful of those things.

1. He charges my phone and does the other things that I may overlook, and I do the same for him. Doing things for each other and being generous with our time, and the random acts of kindness in a relationship is one of the ways (the top ways) that we make it work. Whether he plugs my phone in (because it’s always dead), or I make his lunch, because I know he likes the extra few minutes of sleep in the morning.

2. Sarcasm, followed closely by humour. We see the funny in things. In a lot of the things that our friends and relatives don’t necessarily get. A lot of the things that our friends would be downright offended by – we see the humour and we’re equally sarcastic to one another. There’s a lot of witty text replies, let’s just call it our love language.

3. Schedules. He does bedtime, I do the morning. He takes the garbage out, I keep the house tidy. We have our schedules, and our duties to reduce the nagging that could potentially happen. When it comes down to something that we both want to opt out of? Then we bring out the rock paper scissors.

4. Date night. I can’t remember the last time we had a date night. It’s been at least a couple of weeks. That’s long for us. Date night means time to connect, without the kids, and time to get out and have a leisurely meal or do something fun together. Sometimes it’s with friends, most of hte time it’s alone and often, it’s at-home while the kids are staying at grandma’s because the both of us are not in the mood to wear pants (see, made for each other).

5. Reading the same book. You know how you meet some people, and they’re completely not okay with silence? They’ve got to fill those gaps in conversation? I am not that person. Turns out, neither is he. So, it’s easy to get content sitting there, reading or playing video games, working on something, or just laying in bed – and enjoying the silence. Reading the same book is one of my favorite ways to create conversation, that leads to a two hour chat on a Saturday night before you realize it’s 2:30 in the morning and you’ve got to get up early for kids activities the next day. Reading the same book? It’s magic. Try it.

6. Not letting the kid climb on him while he just spent a half hour trying to finish a level (is it called a level?) in Destiny on the PS4 – because that just happened and apparently I ruined his game because I let her climb on him, so he went to wash the car (because there’s no line up late night night). I’ll keep that one in mind for next time – right now, it looks like I’m picking up second-shift for bedtime tonight. Related: apologizing when you’re an ass, and didn’t realize he’s been trying to beat the level for a half hour (I would text him, but of course my phone is dead).